WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?
Without question, the future national security of the United States of America will be determined by far more than tightening our borders and cybersecurity, being technologically superior, or even fighting terrorists. In truth, the success or failure of our educational system is the prime determinate in our ability to preserve supremacy within the international power structure.
The way we educate our children — all our children — has increasingly historic implications for every single one of us. In this new era of world interdependence, an uneducated, unskilled, and unprepared work force equals an unparalleled disaster for this country. To that end, we must do whatever it takes to ensure a flexible, dynamic labor market and a well-trained, adaptable workforce.
Combined, globalization and technology make drastic alterations to our educational curriculum an urgent priority. Although low-skilled workers have always been at a disadvantage, a deficit of skilled labor is now even more ominous as technology advances and America continually expands its free trade policies and companies become even more multinational.
And make no mistake, despite the campaign promises and rally cries you have heard — and will continue to hear over the next few years — America’s dedication to worldwide commerce will not likely change any time soon because the overall financial benefit to our nation greatly outweighs the negatives (read more about this in the Trade section of Book One of this series). Temporary financial assistance for displaced workers may help in the short term, but at the end of the day it’s education and education alone that will be the great equalizer.
And we’re failing at it, miserably.
In 2019, right before the Covid-19 crisis, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — commonly referred to as The Nation’s Report Card — revealed that only 40 percent of 4th graders and 34 percent of 8th graders performed at or above the Proficient level in Math, a level that represents “solid academic performance.” Only 8 percent of fourth graders and 10 percent of eighth graders performed at the Advanced level.
These next set of numbers should terrify every single American who values democracy. Only 26 percent of 4th grade students, 23 percent of 8th grade students, and 23 percent of 12th grade students were Proficient in Civics, and only 19 percent of 4th grade students, 14 percent of 8th grade students, and 11 percent of 12th grade students were Proficient in U.S. History.
The Basic NAEP level means that the student demonstrated “partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at each grade.” Only 69 percent of 12th grade students achieved the Basic level in reading and only 58 percent of them achieved the Basic level in mathematics. Only 43 percent of them achieved the Basic level in U.S. History.
Breaking the numbers down by race is absolutely devastating. In 4th grade math, there was a 32-point score gap between White and Black students (51 percent to 19 percent) and a 25-point score gap between White and Hispanic students (51 percent to 26 percent). In 8th grade math, there was a 31-point score gap between White and Black students (44 percent to 13 percent) and a 24-point score gap between White and Hispanic students (44 percent to 20 percent).
Only 37 percent of 4th graders and 36 percent of 8th graders performed at or above the Proficient level in reading. Only 9 percent of fourth graders and 4 percent of eighth graders performed at the Advanced level. In 4th grade reading, there was a 27-point score gap between White and Black students (47 percent to 20 percent) and a 24-point score gap between White and Hispanic students (47 percent to 23 percent). In 8th grade reading, there was a 27-point score gap between White and Black students (45 percent to 18 percent) and a 22-point score gap between White and Hispanic students (45 percent to 23 percent).
That was then. You just won’t believe what these numbers are now.
In October 2022, the NAEP released its first results since the Covid crisis began. Even though the federal government sent schools $190 billion in pandemic relief funds — to be used for interventions like increased tutoring, expanded summer school, and after-school programs — the math scores of fourth and eighth grade students showed the steepest decline in the history of the assessment. Just 26 percent of 8th graders performed at or above the Proficient level in Math, a drop of eight percentage points, and only 36 percent of 4th graders performed at or above the Proficient level in Math, a drop of five percentage points. In reading, only 33 percent of 4th graders and 31 percent of 8th graders performed at or above the Proficient level.
… and the news just keeps getting worse. Even though the evidence is clear that Covid-19 school closures were disastrous for our children at the time, we now know that instead of catching up, our kids are continuing to fall farther and farther behind. NWEA calls this “education’s long Covid.”
In its latest report, NWEA — a research and assessment methodology organization — revealed that:
In nearly all grades, achievement gains during 2022–23 fell short of prepandemic trends, which stalled progress toward pandemic recovery.
Significant achievement gaps persist at the end of 2022–23, and the average student will need the equivalent of 4.1 additional months of schooling to catch up in reading and 4.5 months in math.
Comparing across race/ethnicity groups, achievement gains for all students lagged prepandemic trends in 2022–23. Marginalized students remain the furthest from recovery.
Reporting from ProPublica — an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest — backs this assessment up:
An analysis of data from about 80 percent of public schools in the country has found that, in districts that went remote for 90 percent or more of 2020-21, the decline in math scores represented the loss of two-thirds of a year, nearly double the drop in districts that were remote for less than 10 percent of the year. And these numbers don’t take into account the millions of students who have vanished from the rolls entirely since the extended hiatus during which the norm of attending school eroded.
As usual, children of color were hit the hardest, for one because school districts with larger populations of Black and Hispanic students were less likely to have access to in-person learning. In fact, the progress made in closing the educational gap over the past two decades has been essentially wiped out. An economist at Stanford, Eric Hanushek, put it this way: “This cohort of students is going to be punished throughout their lifetime.”
Clearly, yet another generation of Americans is receiving substandard education and that is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE in a nation as prosperous as ours. It’s not only unacceptable…it’s downright embarrassing.
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment that measures the reading, mathematics, and science literacy of 15-year-old students in 76 international education systems. Unlike other modern-day assessment tests, PISA questions do not measure memorization of facts. Instead, the questions measure real-world problem solving and critical thinking skills.
Highlights from the latest PISA report:
The United States ranks 18th in science, 13th in reading, and 37th in mathematics.
China was first in all three categories.
The trend lines of United States’ mean performance in reading since 2000, mathematics since 2003, and science since 2006 are stable, with no significant improvement or decline.
The United States spends more on education per student from age 6 to 15 than all but four Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, yet scored no better than, and in some cases, below, countries that spend between 10 percent and 30 percent less.
That last one hits hard. Bad outcomes for our students are even more frustrating given that total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools for the 2019-2020 school year (in constant 2021-2022 dollars) was $870 billion, or $17,013 per public school student.
Luckily, our universities are still considered to be the best in the world. Seventeen of the top 25 universities on the 2022 Shanghai Ranking Consultancy’s list of the world’s best universities are in the United States.
From 2015-2019, 66 percent of the Nobel Prize winners in the science categories (Physics, Economic Sciences, Chemistry, and Physiology/Medicine) were affiliated with an American university at the time of their big win, and 56 percent received their graduate degree(s) at a U.S. university.
However, our continued success in higher education depends on the skill level of future American students. If the talent of our graduating seniors diminishes, our institutions of higher learning will have to progressively rely on foreign students to maintain their superiority (and we already rely on them heavily!). Unsurprisingly, our politicians half-assed educational efforts have been frighteningly inadequate for decades. In the face of devastating evidence, Congress consistently refuses to challenge failed policies or champion innovative ones.
In 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an impact study on the effectiveness of the Head Start program, which was established in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.
According to HHS, Head Start “promotes school readiness for children in low-income families by enhancing their social and cognitive development through educational, nutritional, health, social and other services.” There are “1,600 public and private nonprofit and for-profit agencies that provide Head Start services in local communities. Head Start and Early Head Start grantees provide services to over a million children every year, in every U.S. state and territory, in farm worker camps, and in over 155 tribal communities.”
The results of the 2010 study were alarming. Although “providing access to Head Start has a positive impact on children’s preschool experiences” and “access to Head Start has positive impacts on several aspects of children’s school readiness during their time in the program,” the “advantages children gained during their Head Start and age 4 years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole.”
Two years later, a follow-up HHS report said this: “There were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts found for either cohort in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children.” The report continued, “No significant impacts were found for math skills, pre-writing, children’s promotion, or teacher report of children’s school accomplishments or abilities in any year.”
This analysis was disheartening to say the least, but more disturbing was the reaction of the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress — which both decided to just throw more money at the problem.
Despite the discouraging evidence in the 2010 study, Congress authorized $8.2 billion for Head Start in 2011, almost a billion more than they allocated in 2010. Combined, from 1970 to 2000, the budgets for Title I and Head Start grew in inflation-adjusted dollars from $1.7 billion to $13.8 billion. The combined budget for 2010 for both was $21.7 billion.
“Head Start remains a key part of the Obama Administration’s strategic focus on early learning,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the time. She continued, “Still, for Head Start to achieve its full potential, we must improve its quality and promote high standards across all early childhood programs.”
Ya think? Ms. Sebelius, with all due respect, that was the understatement of the year. When you made that statement, Head Start had already had 47 years and nine presidents to prove its effectiveness.
What happened next was, of course, no big surprise. Ten years later, in April 2019, researchers from Brown University released a study that replicated and extended Harvard professor David Deming’s 2009 evaluation of Head Start’s life-cycle skill formation impacts, a study that found attending a Head Start program had lasting positive impacts into early childhood.
The researchers from Brown found that “extending the measurement interval for Deming’s adulthood outcomes, we found no statistically significant impacts on earnings and mixed evidence of impacts on other adult outcomes. Applying Deming’s sibling comparison framework to more recent birth cohorts born to CNSLY mothers (mothers who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Children and Young Adults) revealed mostly negative Head Start impacts. Combining all cohorts shows generally null impacts on school-age and early adulthood outcomes.”
In any event, potentially damaging data about Head Start wasn’t even a speed bump for the Trump and Biden administrations, or the U.S. Congress. For FY2019, Congress appropriated $10 billion for programs under the Head Start Act; $10.6 billion for FY2020, plus an additional $750 million under the CARES Act; $10.7 billion for FY2021; $11 million for FY2022; and $12 million for FY2023.